The CIA's View of Venezuela: What We Learn From the Archives

[Judi Lynn]

MARCH 1, 2019

by T.J. COLES

In 2017, then-U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo said: “we are very hopeful that there can be a [political] transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there [sic], so that we can communicate to our State Department and to others.” CIA monitoring of the political situation and interference in Venezuela is, of course, nothing new. Back in April 2002, just days before the coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chávez, a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief anticipated the removal of Chávez by the Venezuelan military.

With the current crisis in Venezuela intensifying, thanks in no small part to the U.S. intelligence apparatus, it is worth examining the CIA’s declassified and partly-declassified Venezuela archives. The archives include memos, briefing notes, and reports from the Agency itself, as well as from the National Intelligence Estimate. The records on Venezuela date back to the founding of the CIA in the late-1940s. With the exception of more recent records obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests, many of them filed by Eva Golinger, the records dry up in the 1980s. Those released so far reveal much about the deeply entrenched attitudes of Cold War planners.

The CIA records reveal that: 1) The main U.S. interest in Venezuela from the 1940s until at least the ‘80s is not just oil but the Venezuela’s role in the region as a symbol of the success of “constitutional democracy,” i.e., U.S. power; 2) The kind of “constitutional democracy” supported by the U.S. was a façade because the records also acknowledge that the military, not the Congress, retained the real political power; 3) The CIA and the wealthy business elites of Venezuela shared the conflation of mild state-socialism with “communism”; and 4) Intelligence analysts held two, contradictory beliefs, that Venezuelans were prosperous under U.S. patronage, but they also acknowledged that half the population lived in poverty.

The historical records reinforce the evidence that, like the policymakers of all empires, U.S. elites think of sovereign nation-states in terms of their exploitability.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/01/the-cias-view-of-venezuela-what-we-learn-from-archives/

[alwaysinasnit]

1. K&R Great post, thanks.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thank you, very much. n/t

[SamKnause]

3. Thanks for all you do Judi Lynn.

I still miss Hugo Chavez so very much.

[Judi Lynn]

4. He was amazing. I always was sure he was going to be assassinated, every day.

The socially diseased oligarchs despised him from the very first, and they had the financial backing, advisory support from the M.I.C. every step of the way, as it even threw US taxpayer dollars, with right-wing Congressional blessings, at the opposition political groups, and their protest projects.

He would have known his life was at total risk every single day, but he forged ahead, and everyone sane could see how courageous he was.

Have never seen so much treachery given life, ever. There was something social perverts found maddening about his determination to reverse the power structure, and bring hope to the hopeless.

You definitely aren't the only one, SamKnause. Same here. Thank you.

[GatoGordo]

6. What oligarchs?

The adecos and COPEI would be very comfortable in the Democratic Party. They are very left. Just not Marxists.

[MRubio]

5. Bring hope to the hopeless?

Okay, his intentions were good, but his execution sucked. Any of you guys ever wonder why something on the order of 10% of the population of Venezuela has fled the country?